Puget Mobile 16″ Laptop (2025) Product Showcase

Last year marked our return to laptops for the first time since 2016. Since then, we have seen Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA all launch new generations of desktop and high-performance mobile components. As such, it is time to refresh our portable workstation offering! Meet the Puget Mobile C160-G.

This time around, we have gone with a slightly smaller 16″ laptop featuring the top-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 5090 Mobile video card and Intel Core™ Ultra 9 275HX processor. The smaller size also comes with some other benefits: the new unit weighs significantly less than the 17″ model, is quieter, draws less power, and is far more efficient. We’ll get into the specifics of all these changes later in the article.

For this launch, we have consolidated more of our testing into a single article. This article will cover performance versus our last-gen laptop, an M3 MacBook, and comparable desktop systems. In addition, we will look at the laptop’s physical specifications, power draw, battery life, thermals, and noise.

Much like our last look at laptops, we will use the NotebookCheck testing methodology as a guide for our own testing. We can’t fully replicate their work—they are experts at it—but this should help standardize our results towards the rest of the industry.

Specifications

The new Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) features the latest generation of PC hardware. Below, we have put together a table highlighting the specifications of the unit we used for our testing. For more information on the laptop specifications (including networking, USB ports, and display outs), you can look at our Puget Mobile 16″ configuration page or the C160-G specs page.

Although we only included 64 GB of RAM, the laptop has support for up to 96GB (2 x 48GB), and may support even larger modules in the future. Additionally, there are two more 2280 M.2 slots, for a total maximum storage capacity of 24 TBs with three 8 TB drives. One of those can support PCIe 5.0, while the other two run at PCIe 4.0. Overall, this allows for a ton of expandability to meet an end-user’s needs, but we do expect that adding to those components will have some impact on battery life. We decided to go with a middle-of-the-road configuration for our testing, which represents what we expect will be a fairly typical starting configuration for professionals.

Our product design team decided to go with a CPU one step below Intel’s highest tier. We opted for the 275HX because we found that the added cost of the 285HX resulted in very little additional performance due to the power limits inherent to a laptop. The only difference in specs between the two CPUs is a slight dip in maximum boost frequency. The laptop still has the top-end NVIDIA mobile GPU: a GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile. Although we know it cannot match the performance of a desktop 5090, the mobile version does feature an impressive 24 GB of VRAM.

Size

For this generation of laptop, we decided to go with a slightly smaller form factor, as we found that the size and weight of the previous 17″ model was sometimes too cumbersome to be a great mobile workstation. Reducing the size helped to cut down both the footprint and weight, without meaningfully reducing the cooling capacity or overall battery life.

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When closed, the new laptop is 14″ wide, 10.7″ deep, and about 1″ thick. Compared to a 16″ MacBook Pro, it is about 50% thicker while closed and extends 1.25″ further back past the hinge point, but with the same width. It is also comparable in weight to a MacBook Pro, coming in at 5 lbs (much less than our 17″ 2024 model, which weighed nearly 7.5 lbs). The Puget Mobile 16″ is much more compact and portable than the 17″ was!

The 2025 model of the Puget Mobile Workstation features a 16″ WVA panel, capable of 600 nits brightness and a 240 Hz refresh rate. It covers 100% of the sRGB and 78% of the AdobeRGB colorspaces, and has a matte finish. Unfortunately, our lab is not equipped to do direct testing and comparison of laptop displays, but anecdotally, we think it looks better than the 2024 model. However, it is definitely a step down from the display you would get on a MacBook or some other high-end laptops like a Razer Blade 16 (2025).

Performance

For performance testing, we benchmarked the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) plugged in, using the laptop’s “Performance” power profile. The Windows power plan was set to “High Performance”, and we tested with two different fan profiles: “Automatic” and “Turbo”. The “Turbo” profile allows the fans to ramp higher and also increases the power limit for the GPU; for more information, you can see our section on Power Draw below.

The other systems we compared against include the last-gen Puget Mobile 17″ (“Performance” power profile, “High Power” Windows power plan), an M3 Max MacBook Pro (the latest generation of MacBook we have on hand, on “High Power” power setting), and two Windows desktops: an AMD Ryzen 9950X and Intel Core Ultra 285K based system, each with an NVIDIA RTX 5080; both used the “Balanced” Windows power profile.

RAM was run at the maximum-supported JEDEC frequency, and we disabled any automatic overclocking features, though other default performance-boosting features were left enabled. All of the systems ran in the same climate-controlled room and had up-to-date drivers and Windows installations, with minimal background tasks running.

We tested with our standard suite of benchmarks, including Adobe apps such as Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and After Effects, in addition to Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve, Epic’s Unreal Engine, and a variety of rendering benchmarks. Unfortunately, due to some recent changes to Premiere Pro, we were unable to include that benchmark in our review.

Raw Results Tables

We choose our benchmarks to cover many workflows and tasks to provide a balanced look at the application and its hardware interactions. However, many users have more specialized workflows. Recognizing this, we like to provide individual results for benchmarks as well. If a specific area in an application comprises most of your work, examining those results will give a more accurate understanding of the performance disparities between components. Otherwise, we recommend skipping over this section and focusing on our more in-depth analysis in the following sections.

Photography: Photoshop & Lightroom Classic

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In Photography applications, the Puget Mobile 16″ shows small improvements over the 2024 17″ model. Photoshop, a relatively light application, has the 275HX 3% faster than the 14900HX, though it is definitely slower than a 285K or 9950X. Based on past results, we’d put this CPU at around the performance of a last-gen midrange processor in this application. Photoshop is also an application where we have found the MacBook Pro (and Apple’s silicon more broadly) to excel.

In Lightroom Classic, the 2025 model is 7% faster than the 2024 model, due to a combination of faster CPU performance and better GPU performance. Looking specifically at one of the more GPU-sensitive parts of Lightroom Classic, Exporting as JPEGs, it is 40% faster than the last-gen laptop. It also beats out the 285K 5080 system in this testing, but we believe that to be an anomalous result due to issues with acceleration in Lightroom Classic. We also were unable to test with the MacBook, as that is currently unsupported in our pre-release version of PugetBench for Lightroom Classic.

Overall, the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) is a solid performer for photo editing. However, we think that many photographers may find a lower-spec (probably without a discrete GPU) Windows laptop or MacBook Air to be a better option. Photoshop and Lightroom Classic are lighter-weight applications that don’t need a ton of processing power, and the flexibility of a small, light laptop with great battery life may be more useful for someone doing photography on the go.

Video Editing & Motion Graphics: DaVinci Resolve & After Effects

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Moving on to video editing and motion graphics, we had to skip testing Premiere Pro due to some updates from Adobe around handling H.265 media. That change prevents PugetBench for Premiere Pro from working with application versions that fully support the new NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. As such, we were unable to collect Premiere Pro results for this review. If you want more information on this, we have a blog post available explaining the situation in detail.

In DaVinci Resolve, the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) is 14% faster than the last-gen 17″. This makes it 30% faster than the tested MacBook Pro, and only 20% slower than a top-end desktop. Most of this performance is attributable to the NVIDIA 5090 Mobile, which not only performs incredibly well in GPU-heavy parts of Resolve like the GPU Effects and AI workloads, but also powers through LongGOP media due to the new encoding and decoding engines in the Blackwell GPU architecture. There are a few areas where it falls behind the MacBook, namely in Intraframe and Fusion, due to the Mac’s fantastic CPU, but we’d generally recommend Resolve users stick to machines that support NVIDIA GPUs.

Moving on to After Effects, we found the 2025 Puget Mobile 16″ to be 14% faster than the 2024 model. It is also faster than the MacBook, but the “Overall” score doesn’t do that laptop justice; we need to look at the subscores. In 2D work, the MacBook is the fastest machine we have ever tested in After Effects, and by a healthy margin. If you need a laptop for 2D After Effects work and can use macOS, a MacBook would be an excellent option. However, if you intend to make use of the new 3D workflows, you will need an NVIDIA GPU.

Overall, Video Editing and Motion Graphics is, as always, very specific to the workflows you are using in your application of choice. MacBooks excel at 2D After Effects work and working with Intraframe codecs, while the powerful GPU in the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) allows for not only highly-performant 3D work, but also GPU effects and the acceleration of H.264 and H.265 codecs.

Game Development: Unreal Engine & Visual Studio

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We test a variety of workflows for game development, from real-time rendering of scenes in Unreal Engine to compiling code in Visual Studio. Starting with the GPU-based tests, this “GPU GeoMean” is a combination of three different scenes, each at three different resolutions—you can see the specifics in the table above. Here, the new Puget Mobile 16″ is slightly behind the last-generation Puget Mobile 17″, unless “Turbo mode” is enabled. This is due to the decreased power limit of the GPU.

Our CPU tests are a combination of two Unreal Engine tasks—compiling shaders and baking lighting—and compiling the source code for the Engine in Visual Studio. Here, the CPU power of the new 2025 model shines, taking nearly 20% less time to complete the tasks than the 2024 model. Even while not in “Turbo mode”, the laptop is only about 15% slower than a 285K.

Unfortunately, we were unable to test the MacBook in any of our Unreal Engine benchmarks. Based on our other results and previous testing, though, we expect it to struggle in the GPU portions of the tests. That being said, we do understand the MacBook to excel at certain code-compilation benchmarks.

CPU Rendering: V-Ray, Blender, & Cinebench

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Moving on to CPU-based, offline renderers, the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) is 37% faster than the last-gen, 14900HX-based model. This gap extends to 42% in Blender. Although slower than a desktop system, it only trails by about 10% behind a 285K. Similarly, in Multi-core Cinebench 2024, the 2025 laptop’s 275HX is 20% faster than the 2024 model and only 17% slower than a 9950X. We would generally recommend GPU-based rendering instead with this class of hardware, but the increased CPU performance we are seeing from the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) is impressive.

Although technically a render test, Cinebench 2024 Single-core is really a synthetic benchmark, which may be a good analogue for certain single-threaded tasks such as some engineering or animation workflows. Here, the Puget Mobile 16″ is 8% faster than the 17″ (2024) model and with the margin of error of the 9950X. The MacBook is actually the fastest in this benchmark, due to it’s impressive single-core performance.

GPU Rendering: V-Ray & Blender

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Our final category of tests is GPU-based, offline rendering. Due to some previous compatibility issues between NVIDIA 50-Series GPUs and some currently existing benchmarks, we were only able to test with V-Ray and Blender. After we completed the testing for this article, Octane released a new version of their benchmark (5.2) and we hope to include that, and other GPU renderers such as Redshift, in future writeups.

In V-Ray, the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) offers 10% more performance than the last gen model. However, enabling the “Turbo” fan profile increases this to 16%. Like other GPU-based tests, this still leaves it a good bit behind a full desktop RTX 5090—instead, it is somewhere between a desktop 5070 and 5070 Ti. Blender shows even less differentiation than this. In the Blender GPU tests, the 16″ was just as fast as the 2024 17″ model, and only 4% faster when in “Turbo” mode.

Wall vs. Battery Performance

One of the primary advantages of a laptop is its portability. However, in high-end configurations such as this, the power draw that the components are able to maintain under load is greater than what can be provided by the battery. Due to this, power targets must be reduced while on battery, resulting in a subsequent loss of performance. Although we recommend that end-users think of the Puget Mobile 16″ as a portable workstation designed to be moved and plugged in, sometimes you have to finish a project on battery power alone. So, how does the laptop perform on purely battery power?

Not particularly well. As shown in the chart, on battery, the laptop has nearly half the performance in Photoshop as when operating while plugged in; the Blender CPU benchmark shows a similar performance hit, though slightly larger at 55%. However, GPU performance is where the true penalty of battery power comes in. As we’ll cover in the section below, operating off battery cuts GPU power to 25 Watts. This results in a massive performance penalty of 96%—the GPU is essentially non-functional for tasks outside of basic display, at which the integrated GPU is likely to be more efficient. Don’t expect to be doing much GPU-accelerated work on battery.

Emissions & Energy

Power Draw

Below, we’ve produced a chart showing the power draw targets for the laptop, depending on what performance mode it is in and whether it is plugged in (AC power) or operating on battery.

As you can see, the difference between operating off battery and wall power is massive. On battery, the maximum power draw is going to be about 70 Watts for the primary components, before factoring in additional draws like peripherals, connectivity (WiFi), or the screen. When plugged in, the laptop can draw up to 230 W, with power draws of up to 140 W on either the CPU or GPU (though not both at the same time).

Noise

To measure system noise, we set up a sound meter 15 cm from the edge of the laptops, positioned 3 inches above the table. We used an A-weighted decibel measurement after letting the tested machines perform a continuous workload for 30 minutes while on wall power. Our heavy load used the same combination of simultaneous Prime95 CPU and Furmark GPU loads as we did for thermal testing (see the section below), while the moderate load scenario checked for noise level during a video editing workload.

Unfortunately, we are not currently set up for detailed noise measurements, and due to the noise floor in the room of 35 decibels (A-weighted), we are not able to provide idle noise measurements.

As the table shows, the new Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) is considerably quieter under heavy load than the 2024 version, even when using the “Turbo” fan profile. Under the combined CPU and GPU load with the “Automatic” fan profile, the 16″ laptop was 10 dBA quieter than the 17″—approximately half the perceived volume. This makes it even a touch quieter than the MacBook Pro under these circumstances. However, using the “Automatic” fan profile does result in lower performance from the GPU. With the “Turbo” fan profile, the new 2025 laptop is still quieter than the last-gen model, matching the MacBook Pro’s 54 dBA. This is still loud, and we wouldn’t recommend working in front of it without some sort of headphones, but it is necessary to keep powerful components cool.

Under the moderate workloads, the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) is still quieter than the 17″ (2024). At 46 dBA in “Automatic” and 48 dBA in “Turbo”, this makes it 6-8 dBA quieter than the 17″ in this workload. However, it cannot compare to the MacBook, which manages to reduce the fan noise to 40 dBA—often barely noticeable above standard office noise. The 2025 model also has improved fan sound over the last-gen model, being lower pitched, but it can sometimes experience noticeable ramping under moderate workloads.

Thermals

Thermals are a major concern in high-performance laptops like the Puget Mobile 16″. Both internally, where CPU, GPU, RAM, and Drive temperatures can affect performance, and externally, where they can affect the ability to comfortably (or safely) use the computer.

To measure the surface temperature of both laptops, we used a FLIR thermal camera that we calibrated and set to a fixed scale of 25-50 degrees Celsius. Some useful rules of thumb we’ve been using are that 20 °C is room temperature, 30 °C is about 85 °F (a warm summer day here in western Washington), 40 °C is the temperature of most hot tubs, and 50 °C is a comfortable coffee-drinking temperature (though 53 is ideal).

For the testing, we ran the laptop in a climate-controlled room and ran it using wall power to ensure that power throttling did not limit performance (and, thus, heat output). We measured the temperature after 60 minutes of idling, and simultaneous Furmark and Prime95 burn-in tests for a worst-case situation. The thermal data for other laptops are provided as comparative references and come from our Puget Mobile 17″ vs M3 Max MacBook Pro 16″ Battery & Thermal Analysis article.

Puget Mobile 16″ (2025)

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At idle, though a touch warmer than our last-gen 17″ model, the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) is comfortable to use on the lap. The upper typing and trackpad surface remains cool, and even the hotspots above the keyboard remain below skin temperature. The exhaust will be warm, but not hot. All this testing was performed in performance mode, so it should be even cooler than this while in quiet mode. It will also be fine to use on battery power.

Under load, however, the laptop is too hot to use on your lap. The bottom surface measured over 50 degrees Celsius, maxing out at 58.7 degrees Celsius; you will want to keep the mobile workstation on a flat surface like a table or desk. The top surface, with the keyboard and trackpad, is also warm. In our testing, we never found it to reach a temperature where it was uncomfortable to use—the trackpad always stayed cool, and the keycaps never went above 40 degrees Celsius. This makes them warm, but not hot. There are some other hotspots near the top of the laptop, but overall, the new 16″ model stays cooler on the typing surface than the last-gen 17″.

Battery Life

To test battery life, we put together several representative workloads and power profile settings that encompass a range of possible laptop use cases, from leaving them sitting on your desk to running complex renders. While most users in real life won’t be loading an application as heavily as one of the benchmarks, this should give you an idea of the overall lifespan you will get for certain types of workloads.

Testing battery life and charging times can be difficult due to power-saving features, background tasks, and battery-preservation features. To give a fair comparison, we disabled as many background tasks as possible (such as update services) and equalized screen brightness, although we left features like WiFi enabled. To measure the discharge and charge times, we tested discharge down to 2% and charge up to 95%. We found that the past 2% performance degraded sufficiently to make the laptops largely unusable, despite having a nominal charge left. Similarly, once past 80%, the laptops start charging much more slowly, but we stuck with 95% to align with past testing.

As we noted above, the new Puget Mobile 16″ has a slightly smaller battery than the last-gen 17″ or the MacBook Pro we tested. Although this does help reduce size and weight, it also means that the laptop has generally shorter battery life than previously. You may be able to make do for a short period of work, but extended use will require being plugged in. As we saw with our performance testing above, though, you likely will want to be plugged in to make use of the higher power budget (and thus performance) anyway. On the bright side, the Puget Mobile 16″ did charge notably faster than the last-gen model.

Upgradability & Repairability

Although we provide lifetime labor and tech support with all of our computers, the Puget Mobile 16″ is easy to open and repair, including upgrading or adding memory and drives.

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To remove the backplate, you must first remove 14 screws located around the outside edge and center of the backplate. You will need a Phillips #1 or #0 screwdriver for this. You can then lift the backplate, starting at one corner, and the tabs holding the backplate on should release; a spudger can assist with this, but is not required. Once the backplate is removed, you will have access to all the user-upgradeable components.

As mentioned in the Specifications section, the Puget Mobile 16″ has support for up to three (3) 2280 M.2 drives and two (2) DDR5 SODIMM modules. The SODIMM slots are roughly in the center of the laptop, with two of the M.2 slots just to the right. A third M.2 slot is located along the bottom edge, to the left of the battery. All three locations are outlined in green in the third image above.

Conclusion

Obviously we’re biased, but we think that the new Puget Mobile 16″ laptop (2025) is a positive iteration on our popular last-gen model. Although smaller, it manages to be generally faster, especially in CPU workflows, generally quieter, and requires less power. However, it does tend to be a bit hotter and offer somewhat worse battery life due to the smaller included battery. Ultimately, the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025), like its predecessor, is a mobile workstation first and foremost. It is best used as a portable desktop replacement, rather than a daily-driver laptop for meetings or light work.

In terms of performance, the new 2025 model of the Puget laptop is about 3% faster in Photoshop and 7% faster in Lightroom Classic than the last-gen model, which means it is 10-20% behind a comparable desktop workstation. However, it also makes it noticeably slower than a last-gen MacBook Pro. We think it is a competent laptop for photo editing, but most photographers would be better served by a thin and light Windows notebook or a MacBook.

In DaVinci Resolve, the Puget Mobile 16″ (2025) manages to nearly match the performance of high-end desktop workstations, largely thanks to a mix of solid CPU performance and the media engines in the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile. This is certainly workflow dependent—LongGOP media is identical, while GPU effects are a good bit slower—but it should be a great product for many video editors. After Effects is a mixed bag, with 2D performance nearly just a bit behind a 9950X, but 3D performance more than 10% slower. For After Effects in particular, a MacBook Pro can offer great performance as long as you only use the 2D workflows.

Our Unreal Engine benchmarks can be split into CPU and GPU portions. The GPU portions are a weak spot for the new laptop, with identical GPU scores to the last-gen model, and well behind a desktop RTX 5080. However, the CPU portions are a strength, with about 25% better performance than the Puget Mobile 17″, and only ~10% behind a desktop CPU. Blender and V-Ray map onto this fairly well too, with the CPU portions seeing healthy uplifts, and the GPU portions merely matching the last-gen 4090 Mobile.

In terms of noise under load, the Puget Mobile 16″ is quieter than last gen, though definitely not silent. Thermally, it tends to run hotter, but keeps heat away from surfaces that an end user would touch better than the last-gen model; please do not use it on your lap! It does have slightly worse battery life, but we strongly recommend against trying to do much work on battery power due to the performance hit. However, those changes allow the laptop’s dimensions to be smaller, thinner, and considerably lighter (5 lbs vs 7.5 lbs).

If you decide that a new Puget Mobile 16″ meets your needs, our laptop workstations are currently available for sale. Or, if a desktop workstation is more fitting for your needs, the Puget Systems workstations on our solutions page are tailored to excel in various software packages. If you prefer to take a more hands-on approach, our products page lets you to configure a workstation based on your preferred specifications. Otherwise, if you would like more guidance in configuring a workstation that aligns with your unique workflow, our knowledgeable technology consultants are here to lend their expertise.